Continental Airlines Inc. won a bid to overturn its manslaughter conviction for the deaths of 113 people in the crash of Air France’s Concorde supersonic jet almost 12 years ago. (www.businessweek.com) 기타...

Again European justice at its best, AF is not responsible???? It is very well known that Concorde's fuel tanks/wing design was bad. This accident was not isolated(at least one instance occured before this tragedy)and engineers recommanded many years before a solution to improve tanks protection. AF/BA did not implement the solution. The decision to remove the Concorde from active service was based on the cost/benefit of a complete redesign of the tanks/wing configuration. Reminds me of AF 447, it's not the airplane nor AF it's the pilots . . . The gvt owns AF, Airbus, CDG,the justice department, do you really believe you'll find the truth? Continental was the scape goat, 12 years have past AF is off the hook.

AF is no more responsible than CO. The fix was not made mandotory by EASA so AF and BA was under no obligation to do so. CO should be held accountable in some part as it was their A/C that was not maintained properly, the manslaughter charge was WAY over the top, but still CO should not be completely free and clear. AF, BAe, and the EASA should share part of the blame as well though, as both parties were allowing an A/C with a known unsafe condition to be operating.

Civil suits are completely separate by private parties and IMHO, they should not have to deal with that either, but i'm sure they will settle it out of court. I meant they should not get away without some sort of regulatory punishment.

If we absolutely insist on assigning fault, would it not be the airport for their failure to maintain their runway in safe operating condition? It doesn't really seem to be negligence on anyone's part. Sometimes, sh*t happens.

IF a hoppy toad had wings, he wouldn't bust his butt on a rock trying to fly. Your statement is correct to that end but once it was laying on the runway it was no longer Continental's or whoever. It was a runway hazard and should have been removed. Much road Hazard damage across the country as you are driving has damaged unsuspecting driver's vehicles and many a NASCAR race has been lost by the leader hitting debris. NASCAR will call a caution and clean it up once they see it, but if you hit it before they see it, your bad luck.

I wonder how many parts the sst "shed" over the years at IAD and BWI. You make it sound like the Continental bird was dropping parts every few feet. The airport authority is responsible for some of this. FOD is an airport problem even they recognize. Evidently no negligence was found with Continental AL and I'm glad. Lets blame the privately owned American carrier rather than the state owned French air line or the French government owned and operated airport. Where is your venom when it comes to AF 447. The government owned it all except for the pilots.

I should probably re-phrase that,but I think an operator has some responsibility in making sure on debris comes off the aircraft at any point in the flight. On the other hand the Concorde had a nasty reputation for exploding tires and one little strip should never bring down an airliner, so AF does have some responsibility to communicate that to the manufacturer and get the problem fixed.

SST Concord was due to go out of service rather than go to the expense of redesigning the wing and fuel tank. Does it alter the scenario that they decided to fly it a few last times before putting a flawed airplane out of service? Should it have been put out of service as unsafe? There is a responsibility to keep parts on the airplane, certainly, and I'm sure the owners and operators want to keep them all in place. After all, if they are there they are presumably needed for proper operation. But, neither man nor machine is infallible and FOD patrols were instituted to pick up the debris so turbines wouldn't vacuum them up. That says some responsibility is assumed by them too.

By your own logic and argument 6 posts up from this one, if the Concord had been put out of service because of its flawed design instead of flying it to the end of its schedule then, it wouldn't have been there to blow up.

To further clarify an earlier post, a friend of mine was on the road from here a couple of weeks ago in a motor home, pulling a trailer and it was at night. He hit a piece of pipe sticking into the travel lane. It flipped up, went down the side of the motorhome and stuck into the trailer. Strictly road hazard. No way to identify who owned or dropped the pipe. He is hung for the damage himself. You don't expect that driving down an interstate highway but it happens. You don't expect FOD on a runway but it happens. It might have blown a tire on any other aircraft as well but doubtful there would have been such catastrophic results. Several years ago, I hit something taking off from KATL in our 757, blew tire, got it confirmed from the ground and other than that, everything else was confirmed OK. At that point it was Captain's call. As it was early afternoon, I folded gear and came home. I held the weight off that side and ER vehicles were out but other than that, landing was normal

I'm still grinning over the " Hoppy Toad " thing :-) But yea, stuff happens with trains, automobiles and aeroplanes. I guess in this case we know the origin of the scrap iron, but to what avail. There are more than enough people who missed a step and are responsible. The French courts certainly don't deserve an award before the next of kin.

I agree that they are off the hook on the criminal charges and really should never have been there at all. As I read the story though there is still a multi million $ civil settlement they are hung with. Personally, even if the wear strip came off the Continental flight, nobody saw it come off, and it would be in the category of like a road hazard here; you hit it, it's your problem. Only in France and God Bless the lawyers.

And by the way, if something comes off your car, you darned well could be held civilly responsible for the consequences, depending on the circumstances. Criminal responsibility would be very unlikely in the US...

If it came off your car and right into another one, you are correct, BUT, if it was laying in the road and you hit it and tore up jack, you'd have a heck of a time proving where it came from. The only difference is that they were able to identify where this came from by departure records, but there was no actual sight of it falling.IMHO

While there was no criminal fault found and how could there be realistically since there was malice of forethought involved, but the fact remains the poor man who "glued" on the part that fell from the DC-10 will live imprisoned by his conscience for the rest of his life. That will be a far greater punishment than anything a court's judgement could ever impose on him. Sure it can be argued that the runway should have been inspected before the Concorde launched given it's vulnerabilities but that is after the fact.

While there was no criminal fault found and how could there be realistically since there was NO malice of forethought involved, but the fact remains the poor man who "glued" on the part that fell from the DC-10 will live imprisoned by his conscience for the rest of his life. That will be a far greater punishment than anything a court's judgement could ever impose on him. Sure it can be argued that the runway should have been inspected before the Concorde launched given it's vulnerabilities but that is after the fact. Sorry I meant to say NO malice of forethought

I lived in Paris for almost 20 years until 2011, and was there when this tragedy happened. I simply could not believe that the French (government) would actually try to put the blame on Continental, even though I had long been 'used' to their propensity to the buck and blame everyone else but themselves. I mean, even my French friends (the 'people') thought it utterly ridiculous - for example, what if the 'guilty' debris had actually fallen off another AF plane instead of Continental???!!

The French, in my estimation are short sighted as evidenced by the prime minister wanting all American off French soil, some years ago. They are as you say, fast to blame and slow to admit. Flight 447 must have put them between a rock and a hard place since they had to own up to AF and Airbus. The only ones left to blame were the dead guys from the front of the bus. As for Jetmech24 in a post below this one: I wouldn't expect a mandatory wing/tank design change on a government owned piece of equipment operated by that same government to be mandated by that same government.

I don't pretend to know much about the court case or the French justice system, but it sounds like U. S. Law and proceedure is being applied to French courts. The only thing I know about the French is that while they are not always right they are never wrong and it's always someone else's fault. You're right about the A&E unless he is convinced the materials he used were faulty. That's a matter for his concience.

My question is how long was the entire corporation going to be in jail after being found guilty of manslaughter in the first place. Do they round up every employee? Just the CEO? Do they lock up all the airplanes and airplane jail until they served their sentence? Do they execute the aircraft, or just the mechanics or pilots even?

LOL - how ridiculous

I am sure it was all just to extort money from the US based airline and nothing to do with justice, and as Patice Venne said "Euro justice at its best"....

What a world huh? :)

At least it was overturned before they started rounding everyone up :)~

I just started noticing that yesterday afternoon myself John, and that was on one of the stories in NEW SQUAWKS. There are certain guys that, and they know who they are and FA could probably track them if the would, just go through the whole site tearing it up and polluting for all of us. FA had a good ide instigating the voting thing but either it's time has come or they are going to have to police it. I'll give you a thumbs up and yours just went to a 1 so if it changes, you'll know it got took away after 0530

You know what? After taking a closer look at it, I realized that I may have been mistaken. I'm used to YouTube and Yahoo comments where the thumbs up are green numbers, and the thumbs down are red numbers. Therefore, I was under the assumption that on FlightAware, every number was a thumbs down, since they're all colored red. In fact, I think it's just a net standing... positive numbers meaning the ups outweigh the downs... negative, the other way around. In this we have no real way of knowing how many of each there really are; just that the voting either tips the scale in one direction or the other. So my mistake and my apologies for what appears to be much ado about nothing.

Thank you for your prayer I'm not sure when surgery's going to be I hope it's going to be in the next six months or so I don't feel very good about it because it's pretty severe some kids do it when young and heal faster. but adults take a very long time to heal so this could be a big ordeal I'm not sure I saw this at the end of my flying career because I love it I really do

When the pain kick sent, are you absolutely berserk. I try to stay calm and smile and be nice but it's so hard with severe pain. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've had to apologize to people for going off on a rant over little issues.

Pain makes you act in a really bad way, I come across as being upset even when I'm trying my best to be friendly calm. It's really rough I just need to get better im oreally looking forward to surgery. In the meantime doctors don't like to prescribe pain medications and they are very frugal so basically living with constant severe pain. Just do a Google search for under treatment of pain in America, it's everywhere it's really nasty. in 98 OxyContin became available on the market and drug abusers in annex flocked to the pharmaceutical grade drugs. this caused the DEA to put pressure of doctors not prescribe too much medication and now there is a huge shortage of proper pain management in fact it's nearly impossible to find a doctor that will properly titrate medication as you should have, the way it has been done for millennia. People that are not currently in severe pain don't know what's going on in regards to pain medication, but when They get hurt or cancer will find out just how bad it really is is just not seen by many people at this time

But I digressIToday I had a CT scan at the hospital. I was able to look at the imagery on their computer before I left. that's when I saw that my ribs on the right side of my body were pushing up against my lung and I have lost between 1/3 to one half of the volume of my lungs because the curvature is so severe. This explains why if so bad when I take a deep breath.

Thank you for keeping me in your prayers, I've been praying to God every night since my accident, perhaps not praying to him for so long prior this is my punishment? Who knows? All I know is that I've got to fix this thing before I go insane and hurt everyone around me I don't like to be verbally abusive every time the pain spike.

And all of this from falling such a short distance while disconnecting the main battery on the piaggio p180. It feels ridiculous such severe injury for such a small fall but I do need some comfort in knowing I was not the only one to get injured while doing that specific task.

I apologize for not editing my response, I'm using voice recognition software so that sky compound all he cares see. I apologize for that but I just don't feel very well right now. Have a great day guys I'll talk to later.

I wouldn't speculate on it as punishment for the past but you definitely need to be sincerely leaning on him now. Seems as if you are there. A lot of things go thru our mind when we are down. Too few of us count our blessings when times are good. I will stay in this prayer chain with you.

Interesting case. I don't like the European blame-game philosophy that somebody always has to pay, but at the same time you can't have an airplane shedding parts all over the runway for others to encounter. I think from now on, an airline should be warned that if you shed debris on a runway you will pay the price.

>QUOTE>"you can't have an airplane shedding parts all over the runway"</QUOTE>

It was ONE part, not "parts" and was not "all over the runway". Obviously CO has a great safety and maintenance record and they would never have done this intentionally. As you can imagine, this was bad for PR so of course they would have avoided it if they could. This wasn't a case of neglect, but rather a case of misfortune. It could happen to anybody...

If I was walking in the grocery store and dropped a can of beans that another guy tripped on, I would feel terrible, but hope that the guy wouldn't press criminal charges on me as it was an accident that I couldn't control.

I was referring to a general case. I know that only one part came off, and I know that it didn't blanket the runway. I just think as the operator of an airline you are somewhat responsible for a part(s) falling off your property and onto a runway. Airport personnel can't see everything. Having said that, I also think that a little more attention should have been paid to the Concorde exploding tire problem. Running over a piece of debris on the runway should never lead to such a terrible disaster.